Улбойтпчбойе: солп умбчб (вйвмйпфелб fort / Da)

6

"What is it?" Tereza asked, full of sudden anguish.

Without turning his head, Tomas picked up the letter and handed it to her. It said that he was obliged to report that day to the airfield of the neighboring town.

When at last he turned to her, Tereza read her own new-felt horror in his eyes.

"I'll go with you," she said.

He shook his head. "I'm the one they want to see."

"No, I'm going with you," she repeated.

They took Tomas's pickup. They were at the airfield in no time. It was foggy. They could make out only the vaguest outlines of the few airplanes on the field. They went from one to the next, but the doors were all closed. No admittance. At last they found one that was open, with a set of movable stairs leading up to it. They climbed the stairs and were greeted by a steward at the door. It was a small airplane—one that sat barely thirty passengers—and completely empty. They walked down the aisle between the seats, holding on to each other and not paying much attention to their surroundings. They took two adjoining seats, and Tereza laid her head on Tomas's shoulder. The first wave of horror had passed and been replaced by sad­ness.

Horror is a shock, a time of utter blindness. Horror lacks every hint of beauty. All we can see is the piercing light of an

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unknown event awaiting us. Sadness, on the other hand, as­sumes we are in the know. Tomas and Tereza knew what was awaiting them. The light of horror thus lost its harshness, and the world was bathed in a gentle, bluish light that actually beau­tified it.

While reading the letter, Tereza did not feel any love for Tomas; she simply realized that she could not now leave him for an instant: the feeling of horror overwhelmed all other emo­tions and instincts. Now that she was leaning against him (as the plane sailed through the storm clouds), her fear subsided and she became aware of her love, a love that she knew had no limit or bounds.

At last the airplane landed. They stood up and went to the door, which the steward opened for them. Still holding each other around the waist, they stood at the top of the stairs. Down below they saw three men with hoods over their heads and rifles in their hands. There was no point in stalling, because there was no escape. They descended slowly, and when their feet reached the ground of the airfield, one of the men raised his rifle and aimed it at them. Although no shot rang out, Tereza felt Tomas—who a second before had been leaning against her, his arm around her waist—crumple to the ground.

She tried pressing him to her but could not hold him up, and he fell against the cement runway. She leaned over him, about to fling herself on him, cover him with her body, when suddenly she noticed something strange: his body was quickly shrinking before her eyes. She was so shocked that she froze and stood stock still. The more Tomas's body shrank, the less it resembled him, until it turned into a tiny little object that started moving, running, dashing across the airfield.

The man who had shot him took off his mask and gave Tereza a pleasant smile. Then he turned and set off after the little object, which was darting here and there as if trying des-

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perately to dodge someone and find shelter. The chase went on for a while, until suddenly the man hurled himself to the ground. The chase was over.

Wandering the streets of Prague, she had no trouble find­ing her house, the house where she had lived with Mama and Papa as a small girl. But Mama and Papa were gone. She was greeted by two old people she had never seen before, but whom she knew to be her great-grandfather and great-grandmother. They both had faces as wrinkled as the bark of a tree, and Tereza was happy she would be living with them. But for now, she wanted to be alone with her animal. She immediately found the room she had been given at the age of five, when her parents decided she deserved her own living space.

It had a bed, a table, and a chair. The table had a lamp on it, a lamp that had never stopped burning in anticipation of her return, and on the lamp perched a butterfly with two large eyes painted on its widespread wings. Tereza knew she was at her goal. She lay down on the bed and pressed the rabbit to her face.

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He was sitting at the desk where he usually read his books, an open envelope with a letter in it lying in front of him. "From time to time I get letters I haven't told you about," he said to Tereza. "They're from my son. I've tried to keep his life and mine completely separate, and look how fate is getting even with me. A few years ago he was expelled from the university. Now he drives a tractor in a village. Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines."

"Why didn't you ever tell me about the letters?" Tereza asked, with a feeling of great relief.

"I don't know. It was too unpleasant, I suppose." "Does he write often?" "Now and then." "What about?" "Himself." "And is it interesting?"

"Yes, it is. You remember that his mother was an ardent Communist. Well, he broke with her long ago. Then he took up with people who had trouble like ours, and got involved in political activities with them. Some of them are in prison now. But he's broken with them, too. In his letters he calls them 'eternal revolutionaries.'"

"Does that mean he's made his peace with the regime?" "No, not in the least. He believes in God and thinks that that's the key. He says we should all live our daily lives accord­ing to the dictates of religion and pay no heed to the regime, completely ignore it. If we believe in God, he claims, we can take any situation and, by means of our own behavior, trans­form it into what he calls 'the kingdom of God on earth.' He tells me that the Church is the only voluntary association in our

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"I used to admire believers," Tomas continued. "I thought they had an odd transcendental way of perceiving things which was closed to me. Like clairvoyants, you might say. But my son's experience proves that faith is actually quite a simple mat­ter. He was down and out, the Catholics took him in, and before he knew it, he had faith. So it was gratitude that decided the issue, most likely. Human decisions are terribly simple." "Haven't you ever answered his letters?" "He never gives a return address," he said, "though the postmark indicates the name of the district. I could just send a letter to the local collective farm."

Tereza was ashamed of having been suspicious of Tomas, and hoped to expiate her guilt with a rush of benevolence towards his son. "Then why not drop him a line, invite him to come and see us?"

"He looks like me," said Tomas. "When he talks, his upper lip curls just like mine. The thought of watching my own lips go on about the kingdom of God—it seems too strange." Tereza burst out laughing. Tomas laughed with her.

"Don't be such a child, Tomas!" said Tereza. "It's ancient history, after all, you and your first wife. What's it to him? What's he got to do with it? Why hurt the boy just because you had bad taste when you were young?"

"Frankly, I have stage fright at the thought of meeting him. That's the main reason I haven't done anything about it. I don't know what's made me so headstrong and kept me from seeing him. Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change."

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"Invite him," she said.

She could not tear her eyes away from him: he looked like an old man. His hair had gone gray, and his lack of coordina­tion was not that of a surgeon turned driver but of a man no longer young.

She recalled a recent talk with the chairman of the collec­tive farm. He had told her that Tomas's pickup was in miser­able condition. He said it as a joke, not a complaint, but she could tell he was concerned. "Tomas knows the insides of the body better than the insides of an engine," he said with a laugh. He then confessed that he had made several visits to the au­thorities to request permission for Tomas to resume his medical practice, if only locally. He had learned that the police would never grant it.

She had stepped behind a tree trunk so that none of the men by the pickup could see her. Standing there observing him, she suffered a bout of self-recrimination: It was her fault that he had come back to Prague from Zurich, her fault that he had left Prague, and even here she could not leave him in peace, torturing him with her secret suspicions while Karenin lay dying.

She had always secretly reproached him for not loving her enough. Her own love she considered above reproach, while his seemed mere condescension.

Now she saw that she had been unfair: If she had really loved Tomas with a great love, she would have stuck it out with him abroad! Tomas had been happy there; a new life was open­ing for him! And she had left him! True, at the time she had convinced herself she was being magnanimous, giving him his

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freedom. But hadn't her magnanimity been merely an excuse? She knew all along that he would come home to her! She had summoned him farther and farther down after her like the nymphs who lured unsuspecting villagers to the marshes and left them there to drown. She had taken advantage of a night of stomach cramps to inveigle him into moving to the country! How cunning she could be! She had summoned him to follow her as if wishing to test him again and again, to test his love for her; she had summoned him persistently, and here he was, tired and gray, with stiffened fingers that would never again be capa­ble of holding a scalpel.

Good God, had they had to cover all that distance just to make her believe he loved her?

At last Tomas succeeded in getting the tire back on. He climbed in behind the wheel, the men jumped in the back, and the engine roared.

She went home and drew a bath. Lying in the hot water, she kept telling herself that she had set a lifetime of her weak­nesses against Tomas. We all have a tendency to consider strength the culprit and weakness the innocent victim. But now Tereza realized that in her case the opposite was true! Even her dreams, as if aware of the single weakness in a man other­wise strong, made a display of her suffering to him, thereby forcing him to retreat. Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed into the rabbit in her arms. She could not get that dream out of her mind.

She stood up from her bath and went to put on some nice

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Just as she buttoned the last button, in burst Tomas with the chairman of the collective farm and an unusually pale young farm worker.

"Quick!" shouted Tomas. "Something strong to drink!" Tereza ran out and came back with a bottle of slivovitz. She poured some into a liqueur glass, and the young man downed it in one gulp.

Then they told her what had happened. The man had dis­located his shoulder and started bellowing with pain. No one knew what to do, so they called Tomas, who with one jerk set it back in its socket.

After downing another glass of slivovitz, the man said to Tomas, "Your wife's looking awfully pretty today."

"You idiot," said the chairman. "Tereza is always pretty."

"I know she's always pretty," said the young man, "but today she has such pretty clothes on, too. I've never seen you in that dress. Are you going out somewhere?"

"No, I'm not. I put it on for Tomas."

"You lucky devil!" said the chairman, laughing. "My old woman wouldn't dream of dressing up just for me."

"So that's why you go out walking with your pig instead of your wife," said the young man, and he started laughing, too.

"How is Mefisto, anyway? " asked Tomas. "I haven't seen him for at least"—he thought a bit—"at least an hour."

"He must be missing me," said the chairman.

"Seeing you in that dress makes me want to dance," the young man said to Tereza. And turning to Tomas, he asked, "Would you let me dance with her?"

"Let's all go and dance," said Tereza.

"Would you come along?" the young man asked Tomas.

"Where do you plan to go?" asked Tomas.

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The young man named a nearby town where the hotel bar had a dance floor.

"If you're not ashamed of Mefisto, I'm all yours." And they piled into Tomas's pickup—Tomas behind the wheel, Tereza next to him, and the two men in the back with the half-empty bottle of slivovitz. Not until they had left the village behind did the chairman realize that they had forgotten Mefisto. He shout­ed up to Tomas to turn back.

"Never mind," said the young man. "One little pig will do the trick." That calmed the chairman down.

It was growing dark. The road started climbing in hairpin curves.

When they reached the town, they drove straight to the hotel. Tereza and Tomas had never been there before. They went downstairs to the basement, where they found the bar, the dance floor, and some tables. A man of about sixty was playing the piano, a woman of the same age the violin. The hits they played were forty years old. There were five or so couples out on the floor.

"Nothing here for me," said the young man after surveying the situation, and immediately asked Tereza to dance.

The collective farm chairman sat down at an empty table with Tomas and ordered a bottle of wine.

"I can't drink," Tomas reminded him. "I'm driving."

"Don't be silly," he said. "We're staying the night." And he went off to the reception desk to book two rooms.

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"Tomas," she said to him out on the floor, "everything bad that's happened in your life is my fault. It's my fault you ended up here, as low as you could possibly go."

"Low? What are you talking about?"

"If we had stayed in Zurich, you'd still be a surgeon."

"And you'd be a photographer."

"That's a silly comparison to make," said Tereza. "Your work meant everything to you; I don't care what I do, I can do anything, I haven't lost a thing; you've lost everything."

"Haven't you noticed I've been happy here, Tereza?" To­mas said.

"Surgery was your mission," she said.

"Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions."

There was no doubting that forthright voice of his. She recalled the scene she had witnessed earlier in the day when he had been repairing the pickup and looked so old. She had reached her goal: she had always wanted him to be old. Again she thought of the rabbit she had pressed to her face in her childhood room.

What does it mean to turn into a rabbit? It means losing all strength. It means that one is no stronger than the other any­more.

On they danced to the strains of the piano and violin. Ter­eza leaned her head on Tomas's shoulder. Just as she had when they flew together in the airplane through the storm clouds. She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the

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happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

Then they all went upstairs and to their two separate rooms.

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Tereza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.

уЛБОЙТПЧБОЙЕ: сОЛП уМБЧБ (ВЙВМЙПФЕЛБ Fort / Da)